Lessons from Deploying AAS Digital Twins for Factory Buildings with Papyrus4Manufacturing

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is one of the technological pillars forming Industry 4.0. It describes a scenario in which heterogeneous industrial devices at the operational technology (OT) layer, ranging from tiny sensors to massive fabrication equipment, are interconnected and collaborate to improve manufacturing's real-time monitoring and controlling. A smart factory built upon an IIoT framework is required to effectively organize the big data generated by such devices to feed artificial intelligence services at the information technology (IT) layer. Addressing this need, Asset Administration Shell (AAS) has recently emerged as a strong standard for representing resources at the OT layer with a standardized interface for all applications at the IT layer. This paper shares our experiences from a case study in developing AAS digital twins for factory buildings using the Papyrus4Manufacturing tool and model-driven engineering.